30 October 2026
Question
If Hashem created the whole world, who created Hashem? How did He get there in the first place? Was He made of something? I know people say He was always there, but I can’t understand how anything can have no beginning. (From an 11-year-old)
Answer
Let’s try a thought experiment.
Imagine the colour orange. Just picture a big orange wall in your mind. Got it?
Now erase that. Imagine the colour blue. Done?
OK, let’s go to purple. Can you see it?
Now delete that, and imagine a completely new colour. Not a mixture of existing colours, or a lighter or darker shade. A colour unlike any you have ever seen.
Got it?
Me neither.
You can imagine a purple elephant, even if you’ve never seen one. But that’s because you know what purple looks like, and you know what an elephant looks like. Your imagination puts them together.
But a completely new colour gives you nothing to work with. You have no frame of reference.
Being unable to imagine something doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It means our imagination has limits.
So if we struggle to imagine a new colour, how can we expect to picture Hashem, Who is beyond anything we have ever experienced?
Everything we see is limited. It has a size, a shape, a place. The things around us came from somewhere and were made from something. So naturally, we ask the same questions about Hashem. Where did He come from? What is He made of? When did He begin?
These are good questions. But they all assume that Hashem is another thing in the world, just bigger and more powerful than everything else.
Hashem isn’t made of stuff. He doesn’t have a body or a shape. And He didn’t begin. No one created Him. He is the source of existence, and His own existence doesn’t come from anything else.
He created stuff. He created bodies and shapes. He even created time. He didn’t wait an infinite number of years before creating the world. Years themselves belong to His creation. He is beyond those limits Himself.
As we say in Adon Olam: B’li reishis, b’li sachlis, G-d is “without beginning, without end.”
That is hard to get your head around. Existence beyond time is a colour we’ve never seen.
That doesn’t mean you should stop asking questions. Just remember that the mind asking them is itself one of Hashem’s creations. It would be surprising if we could fit all of Him inside it.
